“Today I’m excited to announce that we are going even further, and will be open sourcing the .NET Core Runtime. This will include everything needed to execute .NET code – including the CLR, Just-In-Time Compiler (JIT), Garbage Collector (GC), and core .NET base class libraries.”

Microsoft have already been working hard to open source the .NET server stack, and on top of that, they will be releasing official distributions of .NET Core for Linux and Mac.

“Delivering on its promise to support cross-platform development, Microsoft is providing the full .NET server stack in open source, including ASP.NET, the .NET compiler, the .NET Core Runtime, Framework and Libraries, enabling developers to build with .NET across Windows, Mac or Linux. Through this implementation, Microsoft will work closely with the open source community, taking contributions for future improvements to .NET and will work through the .NET Foundation.”

There is no mention of client technologies such as WPF moving over to Linux or Mac, but that’s understandable – moving the .NET Core and server stack there is already a remarkable achievement, and whether all the other .NET technologies will follow suit in the future can only be subject to speculation at this stage.

Before you rush out and try the new preview, though, check out this little warning:

“Since the majority of initial comments tend to be questions about supported configurations, I’ll put this up front: before you try to upgrade from Visual Studio “14” CTPs to Visual Studio 2015 Ultimate Preview, first uninstall Visual Studio “14” CTP – if you don’t, your system can wind up in an unstable state.”

As Somasegar explained in his Connect(); speech, the new .NET version will be known as .NET 2015, which intentionally breaks away from the previous versioning system.

Another release is Visual Studio Community 2013, which is free for commercial/non-commercial use for teams up to 5 people, “includes all the great functionality of Visual Studio Professional 2013”, and brings together the old Express editions which previously were in separate units for web development, application development, etc.

Finally, Microsoft has announced the availability of Visual Studio 2013 Update 4.

Other Enhancements

There are a myriad of enhancements throughout Visual Studio, and they are certainly not limited to the server stack or .NET becoming open source. Visual Studio is getting an emulator for Android (as already quoted above), there will be enhancements to WPF, and lots more. Somasegar’s overview will give you an idea of what’s new, and the Visual Studio blog’s post has all the details.

Further Reading

For more information about the upcoming features in Visual Studio 2015 and .NET 2015, check out: